Newlands blackout 'not Eskom'

2006-03-17 15:56

Cape Town - A contractor working on the corner of Palmyra and Campground roads in Newlands was responsible for the power failure outage which affected the test match between South Africa and Australia at Newlands cricket stadium on Friday.

"The reason was an underground electricity cable being damaged by a contractor," said Cape Town spokesperson, Charles Cooper.

He said the electricity was cut from 14:20 to 15:15, before being restored.

Cooper said the city re-routed electricity to the stadium via another cable.

"It is definitely not load-shedding or in any way linked to ongoing electricity power shortages," Cooper said in reference to Eskom-caused power shortages in the Western Cape.

The power failure at the Newlands cricket ground interrupted play about an hour after lunch, because the sidescreens could not be turned over.

At the time of the interruption, Australia had 228 for the loss of four wickets, in reply to South Africa's first innings total of 205 all out.

Groundstaff had to operate the sidescreens manually while the power was out.

- SAPA